


the wrong end of a wishbone

by crownsandbirds



Series: sadist's lullaby [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: (evidently), Eating Disorder, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Suicide mention, Unhealthy Relationships, but being specific, god idk y'all know riko keep that in mind, honestly those three together make up a fine warning of their own, this is just a 2k character study of their interactions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 23:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13398891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownsandbirds/pseuds/crownsandbirds
Summary: Kevin remembers a lot.Sometimes his entire body shakes with phantom pain, the last gift Riko left him with, the little bloodied ghost. Sometimes he goes to the lonely, empty, slightly battered Foxhole Court and yells at nothing because of the stupid never-ending ache inside his bones.





	the wrong end of a wishbone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [okayantigone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/gifts).



> "I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me, and I have to search
> 
> my body for the scars, thinking
> 
> Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in?"
> 
> \- Richard Siken, Wishbone.

Kevin remembers a lot. 

He wonders what's the feeling of having that bone-deep, brain-wrecking amnesia that people develop after trauma. It seems his own mind is doing a good job of running in the exact opposite way, and every day he remembers a little more. Sometimes his entire body shakes with phantom pain, the last gift Riko left him with, the little bloodied ghost. Sometimes he goes to the lonely, empty, slightly battered Foxhole Court and yells at nothing because of the stupid never-ending ache inside of his bones. Sometimes he jerks off at night with his dumb left hand and clenches his jaw at how pathetic he finds himself. It's all so messy, so messy and  _ pointless _ . He wonders how other people see his mess from the outside. He wonders how they choose to look at everything. 

He listens in his new teammates - teammates? What's a team, really? He spent his entire life surrounded by the textbook definition of a hivemind, where athletes would be paired together and told "you don't stay away from her for even a goddamn minute, even if it's a life and death situation" "if he fucks up, i'm punching you in the face" "same room, same shared oxygen, same fucking soul, if there's even something resembling a soul inside there somewhere, you belong to each other completely until you leave this place", where baby-faced boys and girls would kick at an almost dead corpse because of a slip at practice, where a number meant more than anything in your life, where - a heavy oriental cane, black walls custom-made to develop phobia, soundproof everything, silence, silence,  _ i'm sorry please don't kill me _ , kings and people dropped off to pay debts, and  _ please don't do this to him; if you open your mouth again i'm doing it to you too _ , and blood. He glances at the Foxes from his safe spot at Andrew's side, and he sees their childish cold war, their artificial interactions, their disjointed mess. It all looks more disgusting than the bone protruding from his broken hand looked that Christmas Eve. It's all he has for now.

He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't have anywhere to go despite being able to go everywhere. He only knows how to play but he can't just leave and go slam Exy balls at the world all the time. So he stays put and his mind provides him with the gifts he received on that Christmas Eve.

How did that saying go again?  _ Hell is other people _ , or something. He remembers more clearly the way Jean's upper lip curled in distaste when he said,  _ Kevin, we're all going to die. Stop trying to make life mean anything _ , before pulling on his helmet and heading for practice.

Jean was tender. That was the hurtful, painful, desperate truth. No matter how badly he tried, there was always one last tender place for Riko to sink his little fangs in. So Jean, tender, completely destroyed Jean Moreau, with his impossible French accent that makes everyone's names sound like royalty, and his disdainful gray eyes, gave him a soft, warm black sweater wrapped carefully in red wrapping paper. Because he knew Kevin liked softness. And Riko liked stealing Kevin's soft clothes because they were so big on him and they smelled like him and because, honestly, because- 

(because Riko starves himself and so feels cold most of the time) (or maybe because the complete lack of a human soul makes it harder for his body to keep a normal temperature)

It's a nice sweater. Simple. Plain black. Kevin doesn't wear it, never got the chance or the guts to, especially after Riko stomped his soul out of his body through his left hand, but he glances at it inside his drawer almost every morning. It reminds him painfully of Jean. Jean with his careful, suspicious hands, his elegance, the handsome lines of his face daring you to hurt him any more than he's already being hurt. 

Riko has always loved a challenge. 

But if Kevin stays on that train of thought he's going to sleep even more poorly than he already does, so he jerks out of it. 

Ironically, Riko has always loved Christmas as well.  _ No particular reason _ , he answered when he was asked why.  _ I like the gifts, I guess. The food. Something.  _ It's hard to imagine him loving anything, harder to imagine him loving something for no particular reason. But it's a fact. Water boils at one hundred degrees Celsius, Germany lost World War II, Riko Moriyama is a sadistic torturer who actually wakes up earlier than usual on Christmas morning to open up presents. 

Kevin remembers with an anguished clarity the feeling of Riko's soft strands of hair tickling his face, of hearing him say,  _ Wake up, Kev. It's Christmas. Come get your present _ .

-

Sometimes, he thinks about silly things. 

Like names.

He spent so much time of his life calling out for Riko, and then for Jean, and then for both of them, and his entire goddamn brain spinning around those two names. His two pretty, bloody lifelines. Whispering, screaming, begging, yelling, cursing, moaning ( _ God _ , he hates himself). 

He hasn't called out for them in months. 

Some nights, the worst ones, he hides his face in his pillow and mumbles.  _ Riko. Jean. Riko, Jean, I miss you, I'm sorry, please don't hate me, I'm sorry, I want to go back, I want to go  _ home, _ I miss you so much.  _

Then he remembers the days in which Riko ate even less than his usual pieces of absolutely nothing and his red-hot anger seeped through and crawled and then his left hand hurts and he drinks to try and get some sleep.

-

One time, Riko fainted at practice. 

Which was simultaneously a natural disaster and the most ironic thing to ever happen. 

Because Jean's soul and humanity and fierceness were lost somewhere between Kevin's cowardice and Riko's stupid sharp blades and misshapen, high-pitched, downright childish manic laughter, but he never once fainted at practice. Stubbornness, habit, sheer strength of will, who the fuck knows. Jean's a survivor. He stays on his feet and just gets through day after hellish day. Jean kicked everyone's ass at practice while bleeding underneath his gear. 

It was ironic, to say the least, to see the team's own local psycho who had a sick, disturbing pleasure in slipping his knives underneath people's skins having the fucking nerve to pass out. 

Honestly, Kevin had been expecting it at the time. Being the number two to a number one, being the prince to a king, the pet the brother the lover the soulmate  _ whatever _ , he'd felt it as keenly as if it were himself, the world-shattering hunger, the weakness, the bone-deep exhaustion in Riko's body. You can only push yourself too far. 

So, he ran towards his captain and caught him in his arms the moment his legs gave out beneath him. Like the loyal knight he was raised to be. 

Kevin cradled Riko against his chest, felt the warm puffs of breath on his skin, almost expected to feel a punishing bite because Riko was like a feral cat sometimes, but he just… stayed there. Head lolling back like a small, beautiful, cruel corpse, eyelids fluttering, his pretty, long neck exposed, waiting for someone to break it in half and end everyone's misery including his own. 

He looked exhausted out of his body. Kevin couldn't look him in the eyes and search for guidance, so he glanced around for Jean. Jean's gray irises reminded him of a cold, dribbling rain wanting to drown. 

_ Kevin. _ Riko had said, one lazy night, the two of them sharing a bed, feeling absolutely everything there was to feel about each other's existence. 

_ Yes? _

_ Kevin, I noticed something interesting today.  _

_ Hm? _

_ I don't think it's humanly possible for anyone to feel as much hatred for someone else as Jean feels for me.  _

_ Probably true.  _

_ I wonder why he hasn't killed me in my sleep yet.  _

_ You barely sleep anyway.  _

Jean stepped away from the confused team and moved to hold the door open for Kevin, then followed him to the infirmary. 

The diagnosis was as easy as it was obvious. Riko was basically starving himself. There was no point in even beating him up, as Tetsuji silently reasoned. There was no point in shoving him back to practice if he wasn't able to stand on his feet. Riko was as pretty and cruel as he was stubborn, and he could probably starve himself to death if he wanted to be an inconvenience. There was nothing anyone could do other than keep him on a bed and shove food down his throat.

Kevin wanted to ask him why, but it would be the same as asking him,  _ Why don't you sleep? Why do you force yourself to stay quiet when I fuck you? Why did you try breaking your own finger that one time?  _

He didn't ask. He slept in the bedside chair and waited. For something. 

The day after, Jean came in after afternoon practice, stood in the doorway and stared at Riko's small body on the bed. He looked so tiny like that, all bones and black feathers and daddy issues and sadism, all bundled up underneath a blanket, one of Kevin's hoodies warming him up. So easy to kill. 

"Jean." Riko called, beckoning him with an imperious, if weakened, gesture. "Come here." 

Jean went, obeying out of a bodily ingrained instinct, and sat down next to him on the mattress. Riko looked at him for a long, long moment, dark eyes wildly searching for something. Then he laughed, a flimsy mean thing. 

"Oh, Jean. My little French bird." he caressed Jean's tattoo on his cheekbone with his thumb. "How does it feel to hate someone as much as you hate me? How does it feel to wish for someone's death so fiercely? I bet you would give anything for me to die of starvation right now. But, no. You would want me to suffer. A slow, dragged out, painful death. Right?"

Jean's only answer was to narrow his eyes, and allow his upper lip to curl in disdain. 

Riko smiled slyly. "Don't lose this, Jean. It'll keep you alive when nothing else in the world will." 

-

Kevin likes studying history.

Actually, scratch that, he loves studying history. He just does. 

Back in the Nest, the more he studied, the more he thought about humanity and society and all of those things, and the more he realized just how deep Riko's desperation for attention goes. 

One time, in one of their short scheduled breaks for studying and eating and performing basic human activities, he'd been reading, reviewing notes for his exam the week after, and then Riko put down his own studying material and sat down on his lap, straddling his legs. It was a familiar, almost comforting weight, and Kevin allowed him to make himself comfortable, and then, in a rare bout of courage, gently tucked a strand of his captain's beautiful long dark hair behind his ear. 

"Need anything?" he asked.

"Nothing in particular." Riko took Kevin's face in his hands and analyzed it as if searching for something. His eyes kept darting to the tattoo on his cheekbone. "I like the way you look at me, Kevin." 

"What do you mean?"

"Like I'm everything."

Kevin frowned. As if there would ever be a world in which his every breath didn't belong to Riko. "You  _ are _ everything, Riko."

"But why?" 

Kevin thought about it for a moment. "There's a quote - it goes basically like this.  _ If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he and I was I. _ " 

"It's cheesy." 

"It's true." 

Riko rewarded him for that with a kiss, slow and filthy and biting because Riko's mouth was physically incapable of creating anything tender. 

"Do you know why I'm still alive? I should've died years ago. Do you know why?" 

Kevin knew why but he noticed Riko wanted him to ask. "Tell me."

Riko held up two fingers. "Two reasons. One, I make money. My existence makes money, basically. Two, Ichirou keeps slashing his wrists every year. He still hasn't managed to efficiently kill himself, but they don't know if he'll keep trying until he succeeds, so I'm a backup plan. But you, Kevin. You look at me as if you need me so much it hurts. It's so very strange."

"Is it?"

"Yes, because I feel the same way, and I don't know how to deal." Riko tilted his head to the side. "You know I'll probably hurt you irrevocably one day, right?"

_ Yes, because Riko's hands were custom-made for self-destruction and awful collateral damage _ . Kevin touched Riko's lips and allowed him to entertain himself by sucking carefully on his fingers. Riko was too fond of the sound of his own voice, and Kevin was fond of shutting him up. 

"I know you will. And then, we'll see. You know I'll let you do anything to me, Riko. Just don't do anything that will make me leave."

-

Kevin can't sleep. He finally, finally understands what Riko meant when he said,  _ Insomnia makes you look at everything differently. Like you're underwater. _

He's lonely. He's so lonely his entire being aches. And it's all so pointless. So meaningless. 

He remembers Jean's sharp, cutting voice,  _ Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Kevin. _

He gets up as soon as the sun rises because there's nothing else he can do other than keep walking somewhere. 

**Author's Note:**

> it's 3 am i'm sleep deprived and exhausted and this thing started out as a poem and idek what i'm doing anymore  
> (also to narcissae sorry if i'm being forward by gifting you this, i just thought of your pieces as i wrote it)


End file.
